1. Field of Invention
This invention relates to methods of computer mediated text and graphic display.
2. Description of Related Art
Fluid documents are documents in which information contained in the text of the document is connected to other text or other information such as, for example, a textual annotation. Related disclosures of fluid documents include U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/098,942, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/098,451, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/794,100, and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/098,451, now U.S. Pat. No. 6,230,170, each incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
Fluid document techniques disclosed in the '942 and '951 applications provide methods for dynamically presenting a primary body of data displayable on a graphical user interface and a supporting body of data relatable to the primary body of data. The primary body of data can include an “annotation tag” or “knob” associated with a specific region and referring to the supporting body of data. When a region of user focus at or near the annotation tag is selected in the primary body of data, the supporting body of data is dynamically displayed, i.e., displayed for as long as the user focus is maintained on that region. The data present in the primary body of data is concurrently modified to enhance presentation of the supporting body of data. When the user focus changes, the annotation tag or knob is restored and the primary body of data reverts to its original format.
The primary body of data can be primarily textual, primarily graphical, or some mixture of textual and graphical elements. Thus, the term “data” encompasses both textual and graphical elements. Similarly, the annotation tag or knob can be primarily textual, primarily graphical, or some mixture of textual and graphical elements. The annotation tag may be a numeric tag such as, for example, a footnote numeral, greeked or unreadably small interlinear or marginal text, a symbol such as, for example, an asterisk, a hypertext link, or a thumbnail graphic or drawing in the margin and may have different color attributes. In certain applications, the annotation tag may be a very small, yet still readable, version of the supporting body of data. In other applications, lines, curves, or graphical or textual animations can allow a user reviewing a primary body of data to identify the availability of supporting data. While typically a visual cue, in certain applications, the annotation tag may be visually imperceptible to the user until a pointer or other indicator of user focus is directed at a region to which the annotation tag is related. In certain applications, the annotation tag can be based on auditory or tactile feedback, with, for example, sound, operation of force feedback mice, or tactile displays providing audio or tactile annotations.
Treetables are a particular type of visualization for hierarchical or tree-structured data. A tree is a classic, abstract computational structure consisting of nodes and directed edges or links. A tree has a single root node, which has no parent node, and all other nodes have a single parent node. A parent is connected to each of its children by an edge or link from the parent to the child. Nodes with no children are called leaf nodes. A path in a tree is a sequence of nodes such that each node, except the last node in the sequence, is followed by one of its children.
Treetables are table-like visualizations of trees whose structural clarity is equivalent to that of direct node+edge representations, but which provide more space for data within the displayed nodes, and which make the root-to-leaf paths more easily perceptible. Related disclosures of treetables include U.S. patent application Ser. Nos. 09/954,388 and 09/954,530, each incorporated herein by reference in its entirety. The treetables disclosed in '388 and '530 are structured so that a cell representing a tree node exactly spans the cells representing its successors. The columns of the treetable therefore represent the root-to-leaf paths of the tree. Also, the treetables disclosed in the above applications contain regular rows, so that all cells representing tree nodes at the same distance from the tree root are of the same height. The amount of data that can be included in a cell is thus determined by the height assigned to cells of its row. The above application '388 and '530 provide methods for structuring treetables of this type. They also provide methods for deeper exploration of their content in several ways. One such method is by focus operations causing in situ expansion of the space allocated to a particular column or subtree, thus increasing the amount of data that can be displayed in those regions. Another such method for deeper exploration is by extracting subparts of the treatable into another such structure, allowing more space for individual cells. Another such method is by using the treetables as a guide to the reading, in auxiliary displays, of the full concatenated content of all nodes associated with either (a) individual columns, or (b) all the successors to a given node. A particular use of treetables in applications '388 and '530 is for the visualization of email threads.